


Coping

by SomewhereApart



Category: Private Practice
Genre: F/M, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 05:52:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 18,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1971363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereApart/pseuds/SomewhereApart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recovery is a process, and nobody can do it alone. Starts after 4.08 "What Happens Next," updated through 4.22 "...To Change the Things I Can." Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They're on their way back from the meeting when Charlotte, who has been silent for most of the car ride, suddenly speaks up. "Take this exit."

"What?" Amelia hazards a quick glance and Charlotte sits up straighter, wincing.

"This exit – right here! Take this exit," she insists again, and Amelia has to pull across two lanes of traffic to make it in time. She white knuckles the wheel and Charlotte inhales sharply next to her, but then they're on the exit ramp, hearts pounding just a little faster than before. "Thank you," Charlotte exhales, then, "Take a left at the bottom of the ramp."

Amelia follows the direction, and the next half-dozen or so after that, until they pull into the driveway of a house she doesn't recognize. The light is on over the door, and in the upstairs window, but otherwise the house is mostly dark. "Okay. What now?"

"Now, you wait here," Charlotte replies, a little gruffly, but she's still trying to pull herself together from the meltdown she had earlier, so Amelia dismisses it. It's hard to be cheerful when all you want is to get so stoned you can forget everything (forget being raped, Amelia thinks, and then she stops thinking because she doesn't want to think about that at all).

Charlotte surprises her a little (and not at all) by turning to her with a frown. "Amelia..."

"Yeah?"

She takes a deep breath, lets it out. "Thank you. For tonight. Cooper knows about the pills, and he tries to be supportive, but he doesn't _know_."

"Nobody ever does," Amelia agrees, letting her head drop back against the headrest. "Unless they've been there. You know anytime, day or night, you can call me, and I'll be there."

"Yeah." Charlotte nods shortly, tells her, "Me too." They share a small smile, Charlotte's more along the lines of a wounded grimace than something that's actually soft, but Amelia can see the gratitude in it nonetheless. "If he's home – if I go in – you can go home. He'll drive me back to my car."

"Okay." Amelia's about to ask who "he" is, but Charlotte is already pulling the handle on the door, and while she's certainly not fast getting out of the car – she's moving slower in general these days – Amelia's pretty sure she's already been dismissed for the night. Sure enough, Charlotte doesn't so much as say goodnight, just shuts the car door and walks slowly to the front door. She lifts a hand, rings the bell, and a minute later, Amelia sees the door open and smiles at the familiar face on the other side.

She puts the car into reverse just as Sheldon peeks over Charlotte's shoulder and offers a wave. Amelia waves back, pulls out of the drive, and leaves them be.

**-/-**

Sheldon is exhausted, emotionally more than physically. He'd never imagined, that night at the precinct, that the madman he was dealing with might be talking about his friend, his onetime-lover, his... whatever Charlotte was. And while he's still not one hundred percent sure, he can feel it in his gut that he's right on this one. That Charlotte was raped, and it was Lee McHenry who did it, and while she was being stitched and bandaged and casted, he was sharing a meal with the man who brutalized her, staring at her blood on his shirt, her bruises and scratches on his face.

The thought makes him sick.

So when the doorbell rings five minutes after he arrives home from visiting the precinct again, he almost doesn't answer it. He's beat, he wants a shower, maybe a drink, and then bed. Whoever is on the other side of the door can wait, he thinks. But then he thinks that it's late for visitors, that maybe it's important, maybe he should just check who it is and send them on their way as fast as possible.

He's very, very glad that he changes his mind.

Standing on the other side of his front door is Charlotte King, eyes puffy and red under the bruises she's been trying so hard all day to cover up, lips dry and cracked, looking for all the world like a lost woman.

"Can I come in?" she asks, and he tells her of course she can, before glancing past her to the car idling in his driveway. He sees Amelia in the driver's seat and waves as she pulls out, then steps aside so Charlotte can pass him.

She walks slowly, arms hugged around her belly, and he wonders what she's doing here, why Amelia had to drive her, but he knows better than to ask. She'll talk when she's ready; she always does.

She takes a look around, like she hasn't been here before, then turns her face back to him – there's a hint of mocking in her gaze, just about as much as she can muster when she asks, "You taken to livin' in the dark, Sheldon?"

He smirks at her, flips on the overhead lamp. "I was headed to bed."

"Oh." She looks almost regretful, almost apologetic, but only for a second before the corners of her mouth try to pull up a little (they almost manage it) and her eyes light up for a brief second. "Bedtime already? What are you, ninety years old? Gonna have some Metamucil before bed? DVR the late show so you can watch it in the mornin' before your stories come on?"

He laughs at that, just a little, and is delighted when he gets an actual smile – albeit a small one – in return. "Long day."

"Mm." Her brows go up, then back down. "I hear that."

He nods, and they fall silent for a few moments. He watches her face go from nearly-relaxed to uneasy, and knows the silence is lasting just a bit too long. "I, uh – I seem to have forgotten my manners. I don't have your great mixology skills, but would you like a drink?"

"God, yes," she exhales. "But considerin' I just came from a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, it seems a poor choice."

"Ah." Now the ride makes more sense. "You and Amelia."

Charlotte nods, hugs herself a little tighter. "She's a good kid. And I'm havin' a... bad day."

"I see." He realizes they're still standing in the foyer, and maybe they should change that, but Charlotte seems perfectly content here, so he's not entirely worried. "Did you want to talk about it?"

"No," she answers. "I just... I look like hell. I know I do, and if I go home, Cooper will ask questions. Or he won't ask questions, he'll just hover around me, tryin' his damnedest not to ask the questions, and it'll drive me crazy."

"Well, he cares about you. We all do."

Charlotte shrugs a shoulder. "I get that. And I appreciate it, I do. It's just... sometimes it's suffocatin'. Everyone wantin' to help, everyone wantin' to act like things are okay, or not okay, or... whatever. Sometimes it's like I... can't breathe. Under the weight of everyone, y'know?"

"Sure," he answers easily, because she likes ease, she likes casual. It's comforting to her, he knows. They fall silent again, but it's comfortable this time. She studies an art print on the wall next to the door; he studies her.

"You know how you said you'd do nothin' for me whenever I needed?" she asks, finally, her gaze still tracing the contours of color on paper.

"Mmhmm."

She looks at him, again, finally. "I need somewhere I can just sit for a while before I go home. Somewhere quiet. No talkin', no questions, no pityin' looks, or awkward avoidance, just... quiet."

"Okay." Sheldon gestures toward his living room, knowing this is his cue to move them further into the house. "You can stay here as long as you want."

She follows, then folds herself into the corner of his sofa, her body looking impossibly frail against the full cushions. She looks up at him, tells him "Thank you," with such sincerity it makes his heart ache a little.

"Of course. I'm going to take a shower, if you don't mind?"

Charlotte shakes her head, dismissing him. "Do whatever you want. As long as it's-"

"Quiet."

A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "Yeah."

He's headed for the stairs when she calls out to him again, "Sheldon?"

"Yeah?"

She doesn't quite manage to push the vulnerability from her voice when she asks, "Did you lock the door?"

He didn't, he realizes, so he makes his way back to the foyer. Charlotte turns her attention to something else, or nothing else, more likely, content to trust he's doing as she asked without having to see it. He locks the front door, then checks the back door for good measure before he finally heads upstairs.

**-/-**

Charlotte isn't sure how long Sheldon takes in the shower; the dull sound of water from upstairs just becomes white noise. She's focusing on the brickwork of his fireplace, tracing the grout lines, creating invisible steps and blocky diamonds and trying not to flinch at the flashbacks that have been plagueing her all night. The last few nights. Every night since.

She'd been doing okay this afternoon. Okay, considering. And then Violet had shown up, and told her things she didn't want to (and desperately needed) to hear, and all that carefully constructed control she'd managed to build up for herself had come tumbling down and left her a mess. A crying, jonesing, terrified mess.

Thank God for Amelia Shepherd and her lack of any kind of nosy questionin'.

The meeting had been good, and Charlotte felt a bit more steady on her feet now, but she just... she just... she just didn't feel like herself anymore. Lookin' in a mirror was like lookin' at a Picasso painting. All the pieces were in the wrong places, like she'd healed up wrong. And it was like nobody else could see it but her.

Which was fine, it was good, it was the way she wanted it.

Let everyone think she's the same old Charlotte, and then what happened never happened and she can move on.

And when she can't, at least she knows now that she can call Violet.

She thinks of the shambles she left her office in, and sighs. Someone had clearly gone to great pains to straighten everything up for her arrival back at work. Not a pen out of place, and she was glad for it at first, because everything looked just as it should. Just the way it did before.

But nothing is the way it was before, and she can't just pretend none of this ever happened now. Not now that someone else knows. Not now that Violet knows. Now the secret's out, and now her office – her neat as a pin, tidy, air-freshener-scented office – screams of falsehood and cover-ups and a stifling, heavy secret.

Tearin' it to pieces was just puttin' everything back the way it ought to be. Just exposing the truth of that ugly, ugly place.

But now, she's embarrassed. Now, she's going to have to admit the hell she's going through if she wants someone else to clean that place up again, and Lord knows she can't do it on her own with two bum arms. She'd rather cut off one of those arms than have to call hospital maintenance for a clean-up job, and she cannot – absolutely cannot – tell Cooper, so she bites the bullet and reaches for her phone.

It rings once, half again, and then Violet answers. "Hello."

"Hi."

"Hey, Charlotte." She sounds tentative, like she's talkin' to a small child or someone particularly "special." "Is everything okay?"

"Don't. Don't treat me with the kid gloves after tellin' me you understand. Don't you talk to me like some poor hapless victim."

Violet clears her throat, and tries again, "I'm sorry. What's up?"

"After you left, I trashed my office. Guess I had some, uh, rage..."

"Yeah, I get that," she says in a way that makes Charlotte believe she really does.

"I don't want anyone to know I did it."

"Okay..."

"There's a spare key to my office in my desk at the practice. Silver key in the pencil drawer. Do you think you could... Could you go to the hospital and straighten up for me? I know it's a big favor to ask, and it certainly doesn't have to be perfect, just-"

"Of course. Anything you need."

Charlotte nods a little, hears the creak of the third stair from the bottom as Sheldon descends. "Thank you." Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him head into the kitchen. "I'm at Sheldon's; I have to go."

"Alright. I'll call you when I'm finished?"

"Just text me and let me know it's done. And Violet?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't you breathe a word of this to anyone, you hear me? My business is nobody else's business."

She hears the hesitation on the other end, but hell, it wouldn't be Violet if she wasn't tryin' to meddle, right? Still, she finally answers, "Okay. I'll keep your secret."

"Our secret," Charlotte finds herself saying.

"Our secret," Violet confirms.

Charlotte hangs up on her then, secure in the assurance that her secret is safe, and her meltdown will be erased, and nobody will be any the wiser.

Then she peels herself from her spot on the sofa, pads silently to the kitchen and manages to make Sheldon jump just a little when she comments from about a foot behind him, "Thought you were headed to bed."

He shakes his head, chuckles a little. "You startled me."

Charlotte just smirks at him, then nods her head toward the pan he just dropped two chicken breasts into, and the pot of water boiling on the stove. "What's all this?"

"I was feeling a bit peckish. I thought I might make myself dinner after all. And since you're here..."

"I'm not hungry," she tells him, and she feels like she's said it more in the last few days than ever before in her life.

Her stomach betrays her a second later, though, rumbling just loudly enough for Sheldon to hear over the sizzling of the meat in the pan.

It's Sheldon's turn to smirk at her, before pointing her casually toward the kitchen island. "Your stomach says otherwise. Go ahead, sit down. I won't tell anyone you let me make you dinner."

For once, Charlotte does as she's asked, and it takes the glint of light on a curved vase – and the moment of panic it induces – for her realize she's gone a whole three minutes without seeing her attack in front of her eyes.

It's almost a record.

**-/-**

Lucas is asleep in his car seat on Charlotte's office floor, in the only patch of clear space not littered with pens and books and everything else she'd flung to the carpet. The place doesn't look nearly as bad as it did on Halloween – the violence is much less sinister this time.

Charlotte had managed to only really break one thing, although considering the fact that most of her breakables had already been shattered and removed and cataloged as evidence, that's not too much of an accomplishment. It's less a crime scene now, more evidence of a life thrown into disarray.

Pete picks up the heavier things – binders full of paper, the potted plant that fell to the floor and spilled dirt everywhere. He's on call again, but on break right now, so Violet enlisted his help. The less time for Lucas to wake up in a strange place, the better, right?

Charlotte would hate Violet if she knew Pete was here, but what Charlotte doesn't know won't hurt her, Violet figures, and she's pretty sure Pete has known – and kept – Charlotte's secret longer than anyone else.

Violet arranges things the way she knows Charlotte likes – neat-as-a-pin, right angles, nothing out of order.

"We'll need to vacuum up this dirt," Pete tells her quietly, and Violet nods. "I can do it after you take Lucas – I'll make sure it's taken care of before I leave for the night."

"Okay," she tells him, her eye catching a glint of metal in the dark pile of dirt on the floor. "Thanks."

When Pete turns his back, she bends to pick it up. It's a key. Damp earth clings to the grooves, and smudges over the face of it as she wipes her thumb across it in an attempt to clean it. All it really does it get her own hands dirty. She wonders what it was doing in the potted plant, wonders (thinks she knows) what it opens. She resists the temptation to snoop, to find out what's hidden in that locked drawer.

Instead, she drops the key back into the planter, wipes her hands together to get rid of the dirt and turns back to her task.

Together, Violet and Pete right every overturned piece of Charlotte's office.

**-/-**

_It's done._

Charlotte reads the text message just before she plugs her phone in to charge for the night. She exhales slowly, turns her phone face-down on the nightstand and eases herself into bed. She's exhausted, bone-tired, and her body still aches in ways she didn't know it could.

She wants a pill more than she can describe, but the urgency of the craving has waned into a dull, throbbing undercurrent in her veins. She can't ignore it, but she can handle it.

She shuts her eyes, sees the dark and shattered landscape of her office, opens them again.

Cooper climbs into bed next to her. Her nerves tingle, body on high alert at someone being so close.

She stares at the ceiling, just like always, and he doesn't try to kiss her this time.

Instead he asks again, "What do you need? What can I do?"

Charlotte lets her gaze slide across the ceiling, down the wall, over the window, then onto his face.

"Hold my hand," she offers, and the way he smiles at her bolsters her enough to push down the anxiety she feels when his hand wraps around hers and squeezes.

She exhales, he relaxes his grip, and she forces herself to feel the warmth of his palm, the weight of his wrist against hers. The weight of his... the weight...

Charlotte tears her hand from his suddenly and swallows hard, then reaches for him again with one small difference – "I'm sorry, I just – I need my hand to be on top."

"Okay," Cooper tells her, and he's trying so damned hard for her that it makes her ache.

"You know I love you. Right?"

"I know," he tells her. "I love you too."

"I know." She smiles at him, and it's not entirely forced this time. "Now, get some sleep."

"You too," he tells her, shutting his eyes.

She lays there in the dark for a long, long time. Feeling the warmth of his palm against hers, feeling the sturdiness of his wrist underneath hers, until her anxiety eases a little, until the sweat between their palms is from heat and not nerves.

Progress, she thinks.

She's making progress.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes to the sound of her screaming, to the sudden chill of the covers lifting off him when she shoots up into a sitting position, breath ragged in the quiet of their bedroom. She sucks in breath after breath, deep and quick and shaky. He can't tell yet if she's crying.

Cooper wishes it wasn't a familiar routine, and hopes he never, ever gets used to it. With a sickening curl of nausea, he realizes part of this nightmare routine has changed: he doesn't have to wonder anymore what she's seeing in her dreams. Doesn't have to conjure up some imaginary face to go with his fiancee's terror.

He knows what happened, now. He's seen who did it, now.

He wants to find the guy. Wants to get out of bed, storm out, track that motherfucker down, and make him pay. Give him a face remodeled by bruises and a nightmare to wake up to. Let him see what it's like to suffer the way she's suffering now.

But he doesn't do that.

What he does do is raise his hand slowly, and let it rest gently against her back.

He tries not to startle her, but for some reason she always seems to be surprised that he wakes up with her in the middle of the night. Her head whips around suddenly, breath drawing in sharply, and she yanks the covers up over her chest. He can't see her properly in the dark, but there's enough of a glint of light off her eyes for him to know they're open wide.

Cooper wants to vomit, and hit something (someone, a very _specific_ someone), and wrap her up and hold her tight all at the same time.

But he just lets his palm lay flat on her spine, shushes her gently, and murmurs, "It's okay. You're safe. I've got you."

She turns her head forward again, lets out a deep breath, and another; these ones more steadying than scared. Cooper is surprised she doesn't shrug his hand off of her (she usually does, right away), but he's not going to argue with it. He just keeps talking to her, letting his hand rub in broad, soothing strokes over her back. "It's alright. It's all over. It was just a dream. Just a bad dream."

"No," her voice comes to him, clearer than it should be at 3am, but, well, screaming will warm your vocal cords up, he guesses. "It wasn't just a dream. It happened. It happened, and it was real, and it happens again, every night." Her voice is tight now, low and controlled, but for once he doesn't feel like she's angry with him. Just angry in general, he thinks. Pissed that this happened to her, pissed that she's scared, pissed that her nights have been stolen. And he's right there with her. Fuming on the inside at the unfairness of it all, and doing his best to keep it together and comfort her. "They're not nightmares, they're flashbacks. I'd kill for a nightmare right now."

Cooper wishes she'd let him kill for her nightmares, but she's expressly forbidden vigilante revenge. He feels helpless, powerless to help her. All he can do is ask, "What can I do?"

She surprises him – genuinely, completely – by laying back down suddenly and turning herself onto her side. She moves in close, lays her head on his shoulder, her good arm and his trapped between their bodies, her casted arm draping heavily across his torso. Her fingers brush his, then weave into them, and he can hear the way her breathing comes faster again when they lay like this. She doesn't really like to be this close, isn't really comfortable with it yet. She's doing it for him. He has the decency to say thank you, and she nods a little, then sighs. He wonders how long it will be before she doesn't have to _try_ to be okay with him touching her. He wants to hit someone again.

They're quiet for a minute, so quiet that he'd wonder if she'd fallen asleep again if he didn't know better. Sleep has never come quickly or easily to Charlotte, and it certainly doesn't now. She speaks up again in the dark, and what she says just plain baffles him: "I'm sorry."

He turns his head, squints at her in the dark. "For what? None of this is your fault, Charlotte, you know that. Please, tell me you know that."

"For not tellin' you sooner," she clarifies, and Cooper just says, "Oh." Her thumb rubs slowly against his, and then she's talking again, slowly and carefully. "I just... I thought if I didn't tell anyone, then I could..." She sighs again. "I thought if nobody knew, then nobody would be treatin' me like a victim, and nobody would be pushin' me to talk about it, or expectin' me to act certain ways and then I could just... move on. On my own. If nobody knew, I could make it like it never happened."

"Well, that, uh..." What's about to come out of his mouth doesn't sound very sensitive, and he's trying to be supportive, but she says she doesn't want to be babied, right? "That isn't really the way it works."

Charlotte scoffs a little, and she shifts against him. Her knee brushes his for a second, then moves away again. "Tell me about it. The only person I told was Addison. Because I needed her. I knew there were things that I needed her to do, and prescribe, and I thought she could keep her big trap shut about it, but clearly she couldn't. I don't know if she told Violet, or if your best friend is just stupidly perceptive, but all of a sudden she knows, and I'm pretty sure Pete's suspected from the second he set eyes on me in the hospital. Least he has the decency not to bring it up. And then Sheldon used that big ol' brain of his and figured out that the guy he was at the precinct with that night was-"

"Sheldon knows?" Cooper asks her, suddenly, unable to keep his mouth shut at the stunning realizations that, "I was the only one who didn't know, wasn't I?"

Charlotte is conspicuously silent.

"I should have been the first person you told, Char."

"Cooper," she tells him carefully. "You were the last person I wanted to find out. I worked my ass off keepin' this from you."

He can't help it; it hurts. Cuts deep, and slices into him like a razor. After all this time, she still doesn't trust him. "Why?"

She makes this sound like she's trying to talk, but nothing is coming out, shakes her head, tries again. "I didn't want it to affect us. And you were already hurtin' so bad over not bein' there for me, you were already strugglin' with this whole thing, and I just didn't want to hurt you even more."

"You don't have to protect me, Charlotte. It's my job to protect you."

"And I know you, and I know you feel like you failed me. I remember the way you felt after Violet was attacked, and you have that same look on your face now. Especially now, tonight, now that you know. I didn't want to put you through that."

"And what about you? What about what you needed? You were dealing with this, all on your own. You've been in so much pain, and now I think I don't even have a clue how much pain you were in, because he was so violent with you, Charlotte-"

" _Stop it_." She cuts him off, grunting as she levers herself up onto her elbow and stares down at him. "You stop thinkin' about what happened to me, you stop tryin' to imagine it, stop tryin' to picture the whole thing in your head-"

"I can't, Char-" He can't get the sight of her wrecked office, covered in broken shards, evidence of a hard, brutal fight, out of his head. Can't help but imagine how horrible things must have been for her that night for things to have looked that bad, for her to have looked as bad as she did. He wonders if fighting just made the bastard hurt her worse. He feels sick again just thinking about it.

" _You have to,_ " she insists. "This is why I didn't want you to know, Cooper. I don't want you thinkin' about that when you look at me. I don't want you coddlin' me, or treatin' me different, or thinkin' about the fact that someone violated me when we start havin' sex again – and we _will_ have sex again." She adds that last part with so much conviction that he knows she's trying to convince herself more than him, and God, it just makes him ache even more for her. "I don't want him in our bedroom, Cooper. I don't want him in our _bed_."

Cooper lets out a heavy, weighted sigh, and says, "Charlotte... he's already here. We wouldn't be awake right now, having this conversation, if what happened to you wasn't already in this room."

"But it's _different_ now. Now that you know. You're already lookin' at me different. And I hate that. I hate that it's different. I don't want things to be different, I want them to be normal. I want to be normal. I want to feel like me again; I hate this, Cooper. I _hate_ this." She's on the verge of tears, suddenly, and he realizes she's trying so damned hard to hold on to a life that's already been shattered. It kills him; he can't take it anymore.

"I'm sorry, I have to – Char, can I please put my arm around you?" he pleads. "I get why you don't want to be crowded – I get it now, I really do – but it's been torture, not being able to just gather you up and hold on to you until you stop hurting. I can't take just laying here not being able to do anything. I can't."

She surprises him again by nodding, and offering a tearful, "Okay. Just don't squeeze too tight."

"I won't. I promise." He lifts his arm between them, tries to carefully drape it over and around her shoulders. "And if I do – if I ever touch you in a way that you're not ready for-"

"Stop it. This is what I hate, Coop. I hate that you even have to say this."

"Well, I do. Okay?" He gathers her close, and they both shift a little as they get comfortable. He'd almost forgotten the way she fit against his side. "I have to tell you these things, because if I hurt you, if I do anything that scares you, or... re-traumatizes you, or -"

" _Stop it,_ Coop."

" _No_." He tips her chin up gently with his other hand, and finds her eyes as best he can in the dark. "I couldn't stand it, Charlotte. I can't hurt you. I just can't. I couldn't live with myself if I did something that made you hurt even more than you already are, okay? So I have to say these things, and you have to tell me, because I _can't_ let you be hurt again. It can't happen. I have to protect you, even from me."

She just sniffles, and nods, and turns her face against him again. Her voice is muffled, but he makes it out when she says, "This is okay. Just like this. For a little while, anyway. I can't fall asleep this way, but... we can lay for a while. But can we please stop talkin' about this?"

"Okay." Cooper turns his head, presses his lips to her forehead and rests them there. "We don't have to talk anymore tonight."

"Thank you."

She rests there for a while, and he can hear the occasional sniffle from her, but that's all. After a while, she wriggles a little, extricates herself from him and lays next to him again. Close, but not touching. Cooper sighs; he knows the drill.

Except tonight, she's full of surprises, and instead of feeling the centimeters between them like a cavern, he feels her fingers wrap around his and squeeze, and stay.


	3. Chapter 3

When she hears his voice, she's standing in the bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror, wondering how it can look so much like she remembered and so unfamiliar at the same time (it can't just be the scar on her cheekbone, it's got to be more, but nothing else is out of place). He sounds far away at first, like white noise, and there's a sound like a siren, and then he's closer. Loud.

"Charlotte? Charlotte!"

She blinks, and her eyes are so dry it's almost painful. Then she pulls open the door. "What?"

Cooper is standing there, looking like he got hit by a Mack truck, eyes full of panic, breathing heavily. "Are you okay?" he demands, and she still hears that siren.

"I'm fine. I was just in the bathroom. Why are you...?" She can't find the words to put to it, so she just trails off, and he frowns deeply and points his thumb toward the kitchen.

"The teapot on the stove-"

"Oh," Charlotte deflates, remembering instantly. Well, that explains the siren. "I put it on to heat, must've gone off while I was in there. I didn't hear it."

He blinks at her once, again. "Were you in the shower?"

Her hair is dry. It's a silly question. "No..."

"It's almost empty, Char. All the water's boiled away. It has to have been going off for ages."

She feels her cheeks heat a little, and curses internally. She's not a blusher. A quick glance at the clock startles her – she didn't realize it had gotten so late. She thinks about covering for herself, and then she thinks about how angry he got last night, and something in her just pushes the words up and out before she can stop them. "I zone out. Sometimes. Lately, I just... I try to focus, but I can't, and then sometimes I just focus too much, and... I get lost. I didn't hear it. I didn't realize it'd been so long."

All the air blows out of him, and his shoulders sag, the heightened tension drains from him. "You scared the crap out of me. I thought you might be hurt, or something might be wrong."

She forces a smile – a small one is all she can muster right now – and shakes her head. "Nope. I'm just fine." _Safe as houses_ , she thinks, but she stops herself before she says it. She doesn't want to feel the panic clawing at her throat again, like she did last night, and dear _God_ , she's sick of fearin' Cooper. He's supposed to be her comfort, her support. He needs to be that, she knows that. She knows that she needs to let him be that so that he can be okay, but she just... Something about him makes her... She can't... She just can't.

She looks away.

He heads back into the kitchen to take the pot off the stove. It falls silent, and the quiet is so deafening that it almost hurts her ears. She can hear her own breath, it's so quiet. Can hear every footfall of her socks as she pads quietly to the kitchen. He's standing at the sink; the tension is back in his shoulders. She's not sure why she's here, but there's something about the air tonight. Something about the room that feels charged and primed for God only knows what. She feels the familiar trickle of adrenaline into her belly. The heat of it, the way her fingers itch and her joints start to feel like jelly. She's gotten real familiar with this feeling lately, now that she lives in a constant state of low-grade anxiety.

"When you yelled at me last night..." she starts, but she doesn't know where she's going.

He looks up and says "I'm sorry," again, for the thousandth time. He apologized until he was blue last night, then gave her some space. Then apologized some more, until she finally came out of the bathroom. She didn't sleep a wink.

"He, uh... He didn't yell," she tells him, and she's not sure why she's telling him this, she's resolved that he doesn't need the details of her attack, but it's been bugging her a bit, so... she tells him. "When he was... He didn't yell. I hollered like a banshee, 'til he hit me so hard I couldn't, but... he didn't yell. So I don't know why you yellin' upset me so-"

He looks pained, and it's the last thing she wanted, but he interrupts her. "Because I was mean. Because we've fought, and we've yelled, but I don't think I've ever screamed at you like that, and I'm sorry."

"I know. And I forgive you. But I really need you to not... do that... again. Okay? Please? You can be mad at me all you want, but-"

"How did this happen?" he sighs, turning until his back is to the countertop and raking his hands over his face, up into his hair. "You aren't the only one on that floor, and I know it was late, but shouldn't a quieter hallway just have made it easier for someone to hear the screaming? I mean, your office isn't that far off the beaten path, Charlotte. Someone should've heard something, someone should've stopped it. How does this just... happen?"

He's looking at her like he's expecting an answer, like she should be able to explain it, and there's nothing she can do to ease the desperation from his voice. So she just shakes her head, hugs her torso, and tells him, "I don't know? It was Halloween, the ER is always a zoo on Halloween. People get distracted, and... I don't know. I screamed, okay? I screamed and I hollered, and I fought. He covered my mouth. I tried to stop it."

He melts a little then, and she can damned near see the way he's aching, the way what happened to her is hurting him, and he shakes his head at her and says, "Oh, Char. I didn't mean – I wasn't asking _you_ how it happened, why it happened. I just – I can't – I'm furious. I should've been there. I should've protected you, that's my job."

"Coop." She shakes her head. "You can't be there every minute of every day. And frankly, I don't want you to be. You didn't do anything wrong." She shrugs a shoulder. "Neither did I. He did. He did somethin' wrong. And now we're all payin' for it."

"We're not all paying for it," Cooper mutters bitterly. "That son of a bitch is getting off scot free."

Charlotte swallows hard against the acrid taste in her mouth all of a sudden, and tells him, "Yeah, I really screwed the pooch on that one."

"It's not your fault. It's that asshole DA, and-"

"No, Cooper." Charlotte takes a deep breath, lets it out, and admits what's been weighing on her since the day they sat in that lawyer's office and were told no. "It is. If I'd admitted the rape that night, let Addison do the rape kit like she wanted, told the truth and given 'em every shred of evidence I could, we'd probably have a slam dunk case. Hell, if I'd IDed the guy in the first lineup, we might at least have a shot. Everything that lawyer said screwed us was somethin' I did wrong. So if you're gonna be mad at someone for the DA not bein' willin' to take the case, you're lookin' at the person you should blame."

"You're the victim." Charlotte shuts her eyes, and Cooper rushes ahead before she can speak. "I know you hate that word, but _you_ are the one who was attacked. You were scared, you were ashamed; whatever you were feeling, they should make allowances for that. Women who've been through what you've been through... they should make allowances for you."

Charlotte smiles, but there's nothing warm in it. "They can't win on allowances."

"It's not fair."

All Charlotte can do is shake her head in agreement.

They stand there, him at the counter, her at the doorway. She looks at the floor at his feet, he studies the door frame behind her head.

"I'm tryin'," she tells him, finally, quietly.

"What?"

"To be okay. I'm tryin'."

"Nobody expects you to be okay, Charlotte – I don't expect you to be okay. You scare the crap out of me when you're okay. You shouldn't be okay."

"Yes, I should. You need me to-"

"I need you to be _Charlotte_."

"Which means you need me to be _okay_."

"No, I need you to be what you _are_." He balls a fist on the countertop, then lays it flat, shakes his head and looks at her. "I need you to be scared, or angry. I need you to scream and cry and yell and show me that you're feeling something because I feel _so much_ right now, and I know I can't be the only one. But I look at you and... you give me nothing. You're just... fine. Until you're not, and then you shut me out. I push you too far, and you shut yourself away in another room, or you won't look at me, and I am left begging you to forgive me, or floundering for anything I can do to fix it, to make it better, and there's just nothing. I don't know what to do, Charlotte. I just – I don't know what to do."

Her heart aches – physically aches – for both of them, and there's a painful lump in her throat as they endure another of those long silences they've been so plagued with lately. He's picking at something invisible on the countertop, she's balling up her courage until she can tell him, "You know what I wish? You know what I want more than anything right now?"

"That it had never happened?"

"Aside from that," she tells him, because that's the given. But that's impossible. And it's not that what she wants seems any more in the realm of possibility right now, but it's something that maybe she thinks she can have eventually. She hopes anyway, she wishes. "I wish, more than anything, that we could go lay in that big bed of ours, and I could curl up into you, and hold on for dear life. You are not the only one who's feelin' too much right now, Coop. You're not. And I wish I could rage, and cry, and scream just like you want me to. And I wish I could just lay down with you, and be comforted. But I can't."

"Yes, you can," he insists, and there's a new determination on his face. A new light. "You can do that, we can do that. Let's do that." He takes a step toward her; she takes a step back.

"No, Cooper. We can't. I can't. You don't understand." Her eyes prick with tears and she knows she's not going to be able to hold them back tonight. She's too tired, the day has been too long, and too full of disappointment. "This body's not mine anymore. I mean, I know it is, but it feels like... I'm not in control of it. It doesn't react to things the way it used to, it just... doesn't. You put your hand on me in some totally innocent way you always have, and I flash back. You squeezed the back of my neck this mornin' when you walked by – same way you always do, just a squeeze to say hello, but... I walked out of my office that night – pleased as punch, so excited to see you when I got home – and he was there. Just there. Right there. Punched me in the face, sucker punched me in the gut and knocked the wind clear out of me, and then grabbed me by the scruff, shoved me back inside and shut the door. And that's what I think of when you do that. You do somethin' you always do, and all I can think of is violence. And I don't know how to stop it. I don't. I don't know what to do either, Cooper. Everything is wrong, and I'm tryin' to make it right, I am, I just haven't figured out how, and..."

He's right in front of her now, not close enough to crowd, but close enough to be a comfort, whether he knows it or not. She's lost her voice to tears, and he's shushing her, hands balled so tightly at his sides that his knuckles are white. He's itching to touch her, he needs to, she knows it, but her skin crawls at the thought, and tonight it just makes her cry harder. She leans back against the door jamb again and slides down, down the wall, until she's got her butt on the floor, knees bent. She reaches out and gives his pant leg a tug and then he's sitting in front of her.

Her throat hurts from the force of keeping a hurricane of tears down to something polite enough for company, until she drops her head to her knees and lets the dam break. Harsh, wracking sobs bubble up from her, shaking her shoulders, making her cough with the intensity of her grief. She feels a hand on her ankle and reaches for it, wraps her fingers over his and squeezes hard. He finds her other hand, and does the same, and then she feels the warmth of his temple against hers, his forehead on her knee, and she's vaguely aware that some of the salt water soaking into her pajama pants isn't hers.

It may not be a bed, and it may not be everything she wants, but she turns her face to his and cries with him and thinks that for tonight this might be enough. If they can find the common ground in this, maybe they can move forward. She hasn't a damned clue how, but she's not gonna stop trying. Not yet.


	4. Chapter 4

The chicken was one of his better ideas, Cooper thinks, as he watches Charlotte pick pieces apart and chew slowly. The sex – trying so hard for the sex – just hadn't been working out. Charlotte was right – it hadn't been sexy. None of the times they'd tried this week had been sexy.

"I think we just need to let it happen – the sex," Charlotte says out of nowhere, surprising him just a little. It's rare these days that they're on the same wavelength; the idea that they're sitting here having the exact same thoughts is a welcome change.

So he smiles, and nods, and says, "Okay."

"We're overthinkin' it. Over plannin' it." She tears off another bite of chicken, pauses just before popping it into her mouth to add, "We oughta just let it be spontaneous."

"I'm okay with that," he agrees, his eye drawn to the way her mouth moves as she chews. He wonders what she tastes like right now – all salt and Charlotte, he bets. She swallows, licks her lips, and Cooper makes a point to look at the box of chicken between them. He's pretty sure if he keeps looking at her the way he is, he might end up doing something a bit… _spontaneous_. They've been silent for a just a moment too long – although it's not uncomfortable tonight (another welcome change) – so he asks, "But, it's okay? Sex? I can touch you now, I can initiate if I want?"

Charlotte smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Yeah, you can touch me. I think I'm ready now."

"You think?"

She straightens her spine a little, her chin jutting out just a little the way it does when she's gathering up all her strength and determination. "I'm ready," she says again, with more conviction.

He wants to believe her, but the part of him that lives for taking care of her just has to make sure. "If you decide you're not, you'll let me know? Even if we're in the middle of things?"

"Yeah." Now Charlotte's the one looking at the box between them, tossing the remnants of her latest piece back into it, and nodding just a little. Her voice is quiet when she tells him, "Truth be told, I was, uh… beginning to think maybe you didn't want it anymore. With me."

"Oh, I want it," he tells her, nodding deeply, brows going up just a little. "And only with you. I just thought you needed time, and space. And the last thing I wanted was to put pressure on you to do something you weren't ready for. But believe me, not wanting you has never been the problem. I've never wanted anyone as much as I want you."

She's smirking now, flattered and pleased, and he watches that little smile grow into a grin as she nods to herself. All she says to him, though, is "Thank you." Then she takes a deep breath, and continues, "And you may say this is a stupid question, but… Well, I have to ask, because we haven't talked about it, and, y'know, somethin' like this, like what we've been through the past few months… it might make someone rethink things, so…" She rubs her greasy fingertips together, presses her lips into a thin line, then takes a breath and asks, "You still wanna marry me, right?"

He's so dumbfounded by the question that she has time to add "Because if you don't—" before he gets his mouth working enough to respond.

"It's a completely stupid question," he tells her, and she shuts her mouth and looks just a little put-out. "Charlotte, look at me."

Those green eyes meet his, brows raised.

"I've never not wanted to marry you. Being raped, needing time, that's not… That doesn't… Yes, I still want to marry you. I've wanted to marry you since you proposed the first time. I just didn't want to do it in Vegas, and then it was one thing after another, and… Of course I want marry you."

He reaches up, tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and thinks that if she's had any doubt about that, then he hasn't been doing his job as the good man in the storm. He tries not to think about the things he said to Sheldon that night – he meant every horrible word of them, but she's been making progress. She's been taking steps, and he can see glimpses of his Charlotte in her again. He's found his footing; he knows what he wants now, and that's to be with her. To help her through this, and then marry her, and build a life with her.

"Okay," she tells him with a little smile. "It's just, it's been a while since the attack, and I don't have a ring anymore. And I know a ring is just a ring, but I wasn't sure if in the light of how things have gone, maybe you were thinkin'-"

"I was thinking I didn't want to push," he explains. "With everything else you were going through, I didn't want to add any pressure, or give you another thing to stress about. And I wasn't sure if you'd want the same ring, or something different, and if I should ask you that, or if you'd rather I just go get something, or…?"

"Oh." Her smile is a bit more genuine now. "Well. That ring was…" She exhales – almost a sigh, but not quite. "Gorgeous. There's no other word for it. When nobody was watchin', I used to just stare at it. Just sit there and admire it." She looks just a little embarrassed at herself, and it charms him way more than it should. "My hand wasn't the only thing hurtin' when Pete had to cut it off, let me tell you. I loved that ring."

"So you want that one again?"

"Yeah. I do."

Cooper nods, thinks of his savings account, meager as it is. Well, meager if they're still planning on putting a down payment on a house in the next year, and come to think of it, that's something they should talk about, too. "I might need another week or two before I have the money to buy it, but I'll take care of it."

"I can loan you the money, if it'll help you get it faster," she offers, and she's so cheerfully eager that it takes the edge off the fact that she's offering to bail him out over an engagement ring. Again.

"You are not paying for your own engagement ring," he tells her.

"I said 'loan,'" she points out. "You can pay me back if it makes you feel better, but really, you don't need to. I don't mind; I've got money to spare."

"Charlotte." He's resolute on this one. "No. Not again."

She deflates at that, shakes her head, and looks at him like he's said something that genuinely hurt her. It takes until she opens her mouth before he realizes where he went wrong. "Again? Tell me you're not gonna make this about the money for the practice. How long are you gonna punish me for that? I thought we were past it."

"I'm not-" he breaks off, sighs, thinks he's bungling the hell out of this, and decides now is the time to tell her the truth. "I'm not punishing you, sweetie, and we are past it."

"So why are you bringin' it up now?"

"Because we're talking about engagement rings and you loaning me money."

"I don't see what the ring has to do with the practice." She's crumpling a Kleenex between her fingers now, wiping off chicken grease meticulously and not meeting his eyes.

"Char, look at me."

She glances up, looks away. He hates when she gets like this.

"Fine." Cooper sighs. "Remember when I told you I didn't have the money for the buy-in because I spent all my money on porn and toys and fast cars?"

"Vividly," she mutters, and damnit, she's really settling into this mood. He's hoping the next thing he says will pull her out of it. Tonight was supposed to be a good night – light, and easy (at least once the chicken came into play).

"Well, I lied."

She looks up then, scowling. "You lied?"

"Yes. I lied." He reaches over, traces his fingertips along her forearm, and considers it a good sign that she lets him. "I never would've had all the money for the buy-in – 50 grand is way more than I ever had in savings, but the reason I was broke – totally broke, no extra money at all broke – is because I'd just bought that ring."

Her scowl melts – all of her does, in fact. He watches her lips part as her mouth drops open just a little, her shoulders go lax, her fingers go still on the Kleenex she'd taken to twisting into a thin rope. Then her nose scrunches, and she says, "What?"

Got her there, he thinks, and smiles.

"Why do you think I was so insistent on knowing whether you ever planned on marrying me? I'd just dropped several grand on a big, fat diamond for you, and then you had to go tell me you'd already been married once, and then it all went to hell."

She's smiling now, too, looking at him like she doesn't quite believe him. "Well, if it's any consolation, my first engagement ring was crap in comparison."

Cooper laughs at that, shaking his head. "It is, actually. Thanks."

Charlotte rolls her eyes, and chuckles too. "Anytime." She tosses the tissue into the box between them – now just a collection of bones and crumbs. "So you mean to tell me I lived here for months with that ring tucked away somewhere?"

"Yeah, and believe me, finding somewhere to keep it that you and your neat-freak, obsessive cleaning, let-me-just-rearrange-everything-while-you're-gone insanity wouldn't find it was a challenge."

She sits back against the pillows, relaxed, grinning. "Where was it?"

"In that box of old X-box games in my closet."

"The one I kept tellin' you you needed to go through and clean out, so I could use the rest of that shelf for my stuff?"

"Yep."

"Jesus, Cooper." She laughs even harder then. "I almost pitched that one day. Figured you could replace any of the ones you really wanted, and you'd get over bein' pissed about it eventually. I thought I'd give you another week, and then everything started goin' to hell in a handbasket, and I figured that if you were already mad at me, it probably wasn't the best time to go throwin' your stuff out."

He stares at her for a second, dumbfounded. "Oh, I'd have killed you. I'd have… yeah, that would've been very, very bad."

"Yeah," she agrees, smirking now. "Maybe next time you're gonna surprise me with somethin' like that, you oughta leave it somewhere I can't get at it. Like Violet's."

"Seriously," he mutters, shaking his head at her.

Her nose crinkles again as she looks at him, and he can't help himself: he leans in close, watches the way she goes guarded for a half a second. He hovers with his mouth a breath away from hers until she relaxes and lets her lashes flutter shut. Then, he kisses her slowly, once, twice, before letting his tongue tease out against her lips. Her lips part just a little and she pulls away.

"Coop." He opens his eyes, hers are still closed.

"Mmhmm?"

"Not tonight, okay?"

Cooper makes a concentrated effort not to deflate, or sigh, or give her any indication that he's disappointed she's putting the breaks on a couple of kisses. "Okay."

She still hasn't opened her eyes.

"I mean, kisses are fine. I want you to keep kissing me, just-"

He gets it then, smiles, and silences her with another kiss. "No sex tonight," he finishes, and she nods.

She mumbling something against his mouth when he starts to kiss her again and it takes him just a minute to figure out what it is: "Want it to be spontaneous."

He smiles, threads his fingers into her hair, and deepens the kiss. He can wait for spontaneous – can wait as long as she needs, he thinks, if she'll just keep kissing him like this. He'll take any signs of recovery he can get.


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm sorry," he pants, resting his forehead against hers and licking his lips before pressing them to hers. "Sorry."

Charlotte just grins and tries to catch her breath. "It's okay," she assures, reveling in the way her voice sounds - all throaty and indulgent. God, its been months - _months_ \- she doesn't give a good goddamn if he finished first, she's just glad he finished in _her_. She was too busy reveling in the fact that he was inside her and she wasn't scared, that she felt good, amazing, that it felt just like it used to. Way too busy to be concerned about him coming before she had a chance to. "It's okay," she repeats. "It's been a while. You'll make it up to me tonight." She winks at him, and she's so damned proud of this feeling - this jelly-kneed, flirty, heart-pounding-in-a-good-way feeling - that her chest feels about to bust open. For the first time in months, she feels... free.

 _Victim, my ass,_ she thinks, unable to hold back a little chuckle of delight.

Cooper presses his mouth to hers, hums his agreement against her lips, and pulls away just enough to tell her, "You bet I will." Another kiss and then, "But we should probably get back to the reception before someone misses us."

"Or before we get caught and arrested for public indecency?" she suggests with a quirk of her brow as she finally let's the leg she has hiked against his hip slide to the floor.

"Or that," he agrees, and they're grinning at each other like fools as he tugs his pants back up around his waist, zips and buckles while she puts her foot back into the panties puddled around her other ankle and slides them up her legs. She uses them to wipe at where he's dripping down the top of her thigh just a little, and smirks at the fact that she even missed that - the mess, the damp, slippery feel of an illicit quickie.

She has a sudden flash of the last time she felt it - of the throb of her busted up face, the heat of the gash on her arm, the stickiness of blood and the way she could feel Lee McHenry leaking out of her, and how the thought of it had turned her stomach, almost made her throw up then and there as she ran shaking fingertips along the wall to steady her as she walked on even shakier knees.

She takes a deep breath, pushes the thought out of her mind, and vows not to think of it. She's not letting it ruin the moment, not right now. She's too damned happy.

She plasters a grin back on her face and looks up at Cooper, who's looking at her like a cat who just slurped up a good bowl full of cream. He's all pleased and satisfied, and she feels that sexy, warm feeling drizzle through her again as she smoothes the wrinkles out of her dress.

"How do I look?" she asks, and his smile spreads and warms.

"More beautiful than ever."

She rolls her eyes, but she can't keep the smile off her face. "Do I look debauched?"

"Nah," he assures, and then something in his face changes and he smirks at her.

"What?"

"This is becoming kind of a thing for us - sex at weddings."

Charlotte smirks, too, now, and shrugs. "What can I say? I love a good weddin'."

She reaches for the door and he grins and follows her out, slinging an arm lazily over her shoulder.

"So, where do you think we'll do it at our own wedding?" he asks teasingly into her ear.

Charlotte just laughs, and leans into him.

Right now, today, she can't wait to find out.


	6. Chapter 6

Forgiveness is tiring work, Charlotte thinks as she sinks a little deeper into the bathtub, bubbles tickling against her chin. Tiring, but worth it. She's exhausted, but somehow wide-awake at the same time. Relaxed by the almost-too-hot water cradling her body, but wired by the idea that she's finally free. She's not deluding herself – she knows this isn't over, that there will be more hard days – but for the first time since the attack, she feels one-hundred-percent okay. In control.

Who'd have thought that being confronted, however unwillingly, by the man who turned her whole world upside down would be what it took for her to be able to set it all right again. The last thing she wanted in the world, the thing that had her pulse quickening in the parking structure late at night, and her fingers sweaty as they gripped her keys when she was the last to leave the office – that thing she'd feared so much turned out to be exactly what she'd needed.

She hopes it lasts – this feeling, this steadiness, this peace.

She sees a shadow of movement through where the bathroom door is cracked open and thinks of Cooper. He's not so okay, she knows. He wants to be, she can see how much he wants to be. For her. Because she is. But Charlotte knows better. He's still angry (not that she isn't, of course she is, but it's a different kind of anger now). He's still ready and willing to kill Lee McHenry where he lays for what he did to her. He didn't get to make the choices she did today, nobody handed him the reins and let him steer.

He's been leaving her alone since they got home, but he pokes his head in now. "Hey."

She smiles, lazy, comfortable. "Hey, yourself."

"You sure you're okay?"

"Mmhmm."

His brow wrinkles just a little, and he shakes his head. "How?" He doesn't give her a chance to respond, before stepping into the bathroom, heading to perch on the closed toilet seat as he continues, "You had to confront the man who raped you today. In your hospital, in your place. It's okay if you're not okay. You don't have to be okay here if you're not. We've talked about that."

Ah, she thinks. She's been "okay" before, she remembers. When she was not okay, not at all, and keeping it all bottled in. Trying to say all the right things and just makin' things worse. "This isn't like that," she tells him. "Today sucked, Coop. I'm not sayin' it didn't. I spent half of it holed up in my office at the practice – hiding. Me. _Hiding_ from some weak, pathetic man with a knife in his chest. So I'm not sayin' that this wasn't hard, I'm not sayin' that at all. I'm sayin'…"

She shrugs, bubbles popping around her shoulders as she does. "I'm sayin' I'm not scared anymore. That – for lack of a better word – _man_ used to terrify me. I'd see him in my dreams, I'd see him out of the corner of my eye when he wasn't there, and all I wanted, for months, was for him to be gone. Not just gone from my life, but six feet under, bein'-eaten-by-worms kind of gone. At least, I thought I did, until he ended up in my ER. Until I was the one who had to give the go-ahead to kill him."

"I'd have done it for you," he tells her, and she can't help but smile just a little. It's not what she wanted from him, but there's a small bit of comfort in knowing he loves her enough to kill for her. "Sam should never have put that decision on you. I would have taken care of it."

"No, Coop."

"No, I'm serious. I would've-"

"Oh, I know you're serious. Serious as a heart attack, I'm sure. But I don't want that for you. I didn't want it when you found out I was raped, and I don't want it now."

She sighs, scoots up just a little and ignores the way her shoulders chill in the cooler air of the bathroom. "I spent the day watchin' a woman stand by a man who beats her, a woman who stayed with a man after she knew he raped another woman… How weak is that? To be treated that way, and not leave. And I got to thinkin'... I'd felt so weak, and helpless, but I'm not." She shakes her head, gets to the point, "What he did to me, I had no say in. I didn't get a choice, I didn't get to make any decisions; he took them all away. But from the moment he came into that hospital today, I had all the say. Sam handed it all to me – my choice, my decision. I was in control. I had that man's life in my hands. And nobody told me what I _had_ to do – what I should do, sure, but I don't think a single one of ya would've judged me if I'd told Sam to kill the bastard. But I realized, eventually, that I didn't have to. I didn't need that to move on, I just needed to find my feet again. I was so scared of him, and for what? He's pathetic, and weak, and doesn't even deserve to be called a man, much less a man to be feared."

Cooper shifts to sit on the floor next to her, weaves his fingers with hers on the lip of the tub. She thinks he might say something, but he doesn't, so she keeps talking. Not so much for herself, but for him. To maybe give him just a little of the peace that she's found today.

"What happened to me… it turned my world upside down, Coop. You know that. Everything went to hell in a handbasket, so much so that I lost track of some of who I was. But what happened today reminded me. I'm a strong, decisive doctor, who does the right thing, most of the time, even when it's the hard thing. I'm a woman in love, who stands by her man, but doesn't let him become something…" She trails off, shakes her head and looks him dead in the eye. "I know how badly you wanted to take him out today, but what kind of woman would I be if I let you become a killer, for me? I'm not that woman, I'm not the weak woman who stands by and watches the man she loves become a killer, or a rapist, and looks the other way. And I was raised to do right. Doesn't matter why you do it, killin' someone, takin' a life from someone who wants to live, that's evil. That's what I've been told my whole life. So, I let him live. I didn't make you a killer, I didn't make Sam a killer, and I didn't make myself a killer. I let him live, and now I might get my trial. His girlfriend might get some dignity back. I can walk into my office now, and not feel queasy. I can walk in there, and know that I did right today, and that I am stronger than what happened in there, and I know that this is hard for you, my lettin' him live—"

He holds up a hand, stops her, and shakes his head. "No. I mean, yes, it is. I want him put down for what he did to you – I think anyone who can do what he did should be put down – but if letting him live is what you had to do to feel better, to feel right…" He takes a deep breath, looks her in the eye. "Then I'll accept that. I will not sneak back there tonight and dose him with insulin, or a little air bubble to the vein-" Charlotte rolls her eyes, says his name quietly, but without much heat – she's not surprised in the least that he's already got a small laundry list of ways to kill Lee McHenry and make it look like an accident. "I will stand by you at the trial, and I will… I'll just be here. Whenever you want to talk." He waggles their hands back and forth a little, and smiles warmly at her. "Y'know… it means a lot to me when you open up like this."

She scoffs just a little, and teases, "Don't get used to it. I may be all Zen about things tonight, but I'm still me."

He chuckles a little, then untangles their fingers and brings his hand to her cheek, then leans in until their foreheads touch. "I love you. I'll never let anything happen to you ever again."

She knows he means it, with every fiber in him, but she also knows it's a promise he can never keep. But that's okay. The sentiment is what matters. So she closes her eyes, and smiles, and tells him she loves him too. Then she leans her head back, looks at him and wiggles her brows.

"Wanna come get all soapy with me?"

Cooper just grins and pulls his shirt over his head.


	7. Chapter 7

His lips are on her neck, his hand teasing back and forth over her belly, just above the waist of her pajama bottoms. She should be into this, she knows, but she's not. She's distracted. She's… guilty.

"Coop…. Not tonight," she whispers; she's unsurprised when he huffs his disappointment and plops his chin on her shoulder, but she doesn't really mind either. Sex is a new thing for them again, and he's been very patient, but very eager, and she's loathe to tell him no after makin' him wait so long (and truth be told, every time she does it she feels a little stronger, a little more herself, a little more right). But tonight, in one of the many guest rooms of Addison's parents' house… "Not here. This isn't our place."

He lifts his head and frowns down at her, then almost smirks. "Charlotte. We've done it in your office, my office, several supply closets, your childhood bed, Violet's couch, three restaurant bathrooms, we very nearly joined the mile high club twice, including on the way here… And I could go on. You're honestly saying no because 'this isn't our bed?'"

He has a point there, she supposes, so she just shrugs a shoulder and says. "It just seems… We're here for a funeral, and…" She trails off, studies his face for a second, and then just says what's really on her mind. "Does it bother you, bein' here? Seein' Archer? I mean, after what he and I… Does it bother you?"

His face softens, and he shifts next to her a little bit, settles onto his elbow and looks down at her. He threads their fingers together, rubs his thumb over her left ring finger, still bare even though she has her engagement ring back now, tucked away in her jewelry box at home. "I forgave you for that years ago."

"That's not what I asked you."

"You love me."

"Yes."

"You're gonna marry me."

"Yes."

"We're past this."

"...Yes."

"So… it doesn't matter anymore." He lifts her hand, kisses her ring finger, then her middle, her pointer, slides back over to her pinky to make sure he gets that one, too. "But it bothers _you_ ," he deduces.

Charlotte looks at where their hands are joined, squeezes her fingers against his. "Y'know, one of the reasons I didn't want to tell you the truth about the rape… was because I promised you, after Archer, that nobody else would ever get to be with me like you do. Not while we were together, and committed."

"Oh, Charlotte…" She hates the way he says it, all sympathetic, and she pushes ahead before he can make her feel even sillier about feelin' that way than she already does.

"And I know it wasn't my fault, and I know you'd never blame me for what happened, but… I felt it. Then. I wanted to hide it. I wanted to do exactly what I did after Archer – go home and take a shower so hot it nearly seared my skin off, scrub until I felt raw, and know I still wouldn't end up feelin' clean. And I know what it's like, losin' a parent, so I'm all for bein' here for Addison. I just wish Archer wasn't standin' there in front of me reminding me how ashamed I can feel about myself."

"We can go," he tells her, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her collarbone. "Right after the funeral tomorrow, if you want. We can just go home. If being here reminds you of what happened-"

She shakes her head, cuts him off. "No. It's not like that. It's not unbearable or consuming, it just kinda kills the mood, is all. Seein' him, rememberin' what we did."

"Ah." He nods a little, he gets it. "So no sex while we're here is what you're saying."

"Yeah. But when we get home," she assures him, "All bets are off. I'll screw your brains out just as soon as we're back in our own bed, okay?"

She smiles, and he laughs, tells her, "Deal," and then settles in next to her, drapes an arm across her belly and nuzzles his nose into her hair. The steady in-and-out of his breath seems overly loud against her ear, so she shifts her head just a little. Quieter now, tickling against her neck. Better. His lips brush her skin in a whisper of a kiss and she shivers involuntarily.

Fifteen minutes later, they're both still wide awake, so she heads down the kitchen in search of something to settle them both. What she finds (or really, what finds her) is a friend in need.


	8. Chapter 8

She doesn't want to bring it up, she knows bygones should be bygones, and she's forgiven him, so it really shouldn't matter. It doesn't. She tells herself it doesn't. But just because it doesn't make a difference doesn't mean she doesn't want to know. If not because of Cooper, then because of Amelia. Because she meant what she said – she doesn't trust lightly, and finding out that her fiancé and one of the few people she might dare to give the label of "confidante" had kissed behind her back – and then not breathed a word of it to her for months – that still stung.

So when they're sitting at a red light, half way home, in a moment of comfortable silence, she makes the choice to ruin the moment and make things considerably more tense.

"I'm gonna ask you a question," she begins, slowly, "And I want a honest answer."

She notices him tense almost imperceptibly before he nods, and smiles at her. "Of course. I'm all about the honesty from now on."

"Good." She twists the ring on her finger absently. "When you kissed Amelia-" He lets out a slow breath as she finishes her question, "Did she kiss you back?"

He opens his mouth to answer, but she has a sudden moment of motor-mouth and rushes ahead before he gets a word out. "Not that it matters – I asked Amelia, and she said it made no difference in the end, and she's right. It's not gonna change whether I forgive you or not, it's not gonna set us forward or back, I just… I want to know. And don't protect her either – I want the truth."

"I already told you I wouldn't lie," he reminds her, before sucking in a breath and answering, "And no. She didn't. I'd barely planted one on her before she was sliding off the couch and telling me no."

She's mollified by that, feels a small pit of betrayal dissolve in her gut. She'd always considered Amelia to be loyal – it was hard not to when the woman had seen her stumbling and crying and spilling her guts in an NA meeting and not blabbed about it to anyone – and the idea that she hadn't been, the idea that this person who she genuinely liked (which was rare enough), and actually trusted (even rarer), might have betrayed her… Well, Charlotte was sick of reaching out only to get burned.

Charlotte shakes it off, glances in Cooper's direction, but her eyes barely make it past the audio console. "It was at the practice?"

"Yeah."

"When?" She's not sure she wants to know, but at the same time, she's dying to know. At what point did this little betrayal – this forgivable, understandable, but still painful betrayal – happen? She doesn't want to wonder how long she's been lied to, but a tiny, selfish part of her brain can't help but frame it that way. She closes her eyes and forgives Cooper again. Forgives both of them again. Forgiveness isn't just a one-time thing, she was told years ago. Sometimes you have to grant it again and again, until it sticks.

"After the DA told us they wouldn't prosecute."

She nods. That makes a certain amount of sense. She remembers that day, remembers wishing she could just step out of her skin, remembers not knowing what to do with herself, not knowing what to do with the knowledge that the man who turned her whole world upside down was going to just walk away without punishment. Without justice.

"The night you yelled at me?"

"No. The night after."

"Ah. The night you came home looking like hell."

"Yeah. That one." He's looking at the road and not at her, but she thinks that probably safer in a number of ways, for both of them. "I was sitting in the dark, stewing, she came in to talk to me, I laid one on her, she beat it for the door and told me we'd pretend it never happened. And then I went downstairs and talked to Sheldon for an hour and a half, because I knew I was in bad shape if I could do something as stupid as cheat on you. Especially then."

She wants to point out that at least he didn't have sex with her, but she's stuck on the last thing he said. "You talked to Sheldon? About me?"

"About me," he corrects, before adding, "And, yes, about you. Some. But mostly in the context of me, and how I felt about everything. I needed to talk. I had stuff… " He trails off, shakes his head a little. "It was for me." He hazards a glance at her. "Does that bother you?"

"No," she tells him, and she finds that she's telling the truth. "Sheldon's good to talk to. Great, even. And if you've gotta talk to someone about me and what we've been goin' through, he's the one I'd prefer. He's best at keeping his mouth shut." She thinks of Lee McHenry, of Sheldon having him called in on her case, and adds, "Most of the time."

They're silent for a few minutes – the few minutes it takes them to pull into their parking structure. As he parks his car next to hers, Charlotte turns to face him full-on. "Cooper?"

"Yeah."

"I really do forgive you." She needs to make sure he knows, that both of them know. She needs to make sure this sticks. "I mean it. We're gonna get outta this car, and we're gonna be just fine. We don't need to talk about it anymore, we don't need to worry about it anymore. I know everything I need to, and it's all forgiven, and we're gonna move forward. Plan our weddin', and start our life together, and not let any of this get in the way. Okay?"

He smiles at her, nods, says, "More than okay. Thank you."

Charlotte leans forward, seals it with a kiss, and then reaches for the door handle. She leaves his little indiscretion behind as she steps out onto the concrete, shuts the door on it, and walks around to his side of the car. She weaves her fingers with his and squeezes, then leans into his side just a little as they head for the elevator. They're going to be just fine, she tells herself. Just fine.


	9. Chapter 9

They're sitting on the sofa, watching TV, just like they've been pretty much since they got home. For as much as Cooper insists he's okay, she knows better. He's been quiet ever since they left the hospital. She can't decide whether it's a welcome change from last night, when he spent half the night talkin' her ear off, tryin' to convince her that harvesting that baby's eggs would be a bad idea, and how could she even consider it. She trusts in the decision she made, but it doesn't keep her from feeling just a little bit of guilt over how fraught he is about the whole thing. She meant what she said tonight – no matter what her opinion is when it comes to a patient, she never means it to hurt him. And she wishes it never did.

She turns her face into his hair, presses a kiss to the top of his head where it's resting on her shoulder, and hopes he knows that.

Cooper shifts just a little bit next to her. She can't figure out quite how he's comfortable right now, twisted and scrunched and stretched as he is, but she figures he's drawin' comfort from her, hopes he is, anyway, so she doesn't say anything, and she doesn't move.

His hand finds her arm, traces the bare skin there, up and down her forearm in slow, lazy passes. She looks down, watches him, feels goosebumps flare over her skin. From this angle, she can't tell if he's watchin' the TV or his hand, so she's left to wonder if he really realizes what he's doing as he strokes lazily over the long, thin pink scar on her arm.

Amelia was right – she does a damned good suture, and if you didn't already know Charlotte had gotten fifty-three stitches in her forearm, you'd never guess it from the sight of her. But she knows. She remembers every God-awful stitch. The pain of it, the burn, the way the suture thread felt sliding through her skin. The way the adrenaline started to kick in after stitch seventeen and make it all just slightly more bearable. How hard it had been to sit still through the agony (and how much it had hurt to move any damned muscle that night), and the way Amelia had kept quiet about the tears that had welled up and spilled over, the sobs she hadn't been able to hold back. Amelia had shed a tear or two herself, wiping them away between stitches without a word.

She wonders, now and again, if that had bonded them even more than the NA meetings. Meetings were vulnerable, and personal, and sometimes horrible. But there's a certain intimacy to closing someone's skin up, stitch by painful stitch, to seein' a person in that kind of primal, physical misery. To causin' it. To healin' it.

And she remembers Cooper, then. That night. That moment. The way he couldn't bear to see her hurt that much, the agony he'd spent on her, and how she felt just the same. She'd never wanted to tell him about the rape, not from the minute it happened, but she'd known, then, (or thought she had, anyway) that he could never know. She couldn't bear the thought of the misery he'd go through knowing what had really happened to her. Not if it pained him so much to sit through two stitches.

She's glad he knows, now. Glad she was wrong about it, now. Because she doesn't know how she'd have made it through the last few months without him. But she knows, too, that he's been through a world of hurt over her. With her. Because of her. He doesn't blame her, she knows that, and she tries not to feel guilty about it, but there's a tiny part of her, that same part that never wants to hurt him, that aches over it.

So she shifts her shoulder underneath his head, and when he lifts it to frown at her, she tugs him down to lay with his head in her lap, traces her fingers through his hair and smiles as he stretches out across the couch, gets comfortable again.

"Was I hurting your shoulder?" he asks, his own shoulders nudging against her thigh as he settles.

"No," she tells him. "I was just thinkin' about you, wanted to see your face. I don't think I've thanked you enough, for everything you've done the last few months. For bein' here for me the way you have, and… I know it was hard for you. And I'm sorry for that."

He was smiling at her just a little, but his mouth draws into a frown now, and he grabs her hand, brings it to his mouth and kisses the back of it. "Being there for you isn't hard for me."

Charlotte raises a doubtful brow. "Cooper. You're a horrible liar."

He sighs a little. "I don't want you to feel bad about me supporting you. That's the last thing I want, Charlotte."

"I know," she tells him.

"It's not a hardship."

"Sure, it is," she counters. "But it's part of the package, right? Lovin' someone, bein' there for them, hurtin' when they hurt. I'm hurtin' for you right now, tonight, and it's not easy. And it's nothin' compared to what you've been through this year for me."

"I told you, I'm fine," he tells her again, and Charlotte rolls her eyes a little.

"No, you're not, but that's not the point, so I'm gonna let it go for now."

"What's the point, then?" he asks her and she swirls her fingertips through the hair above his ear again, and answers.

"That I'm grateful for you. And I want you to know that. And I'm here for you, too."

Cooper smiles a little, then turns his head, presses his face against her belly, and shuts his eyes. He murmurs a thank you, and they stay like that, still and quiet, for a long, long time.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Alright. I'm making the executive decision to skip episode 4x17 for this story. Not because it wasn't rife with good CharCoop stuff, but because that last scene that they have pretty much caps it for me, and I just can't think of anything suitable to write about after that deliciousness. Also, I've been sitting on the chapter you're about to read since 4.18 aired, and it's been killing me not to post it. So. I apologize for the lack of 4x17 fanfictiony goodness. But please enjoy this little snippet, immediately following the events of 4.18.

Charlotte pulls out of the kiss with a giggle, and slides onto the piano bench next to him, and Cooper thinks she's never been more beautiful than she is right this second. Just sitting there on the bench of the piano she bought for him – _his_ new piano – and smiling at him. He watches the familiar way her smile turns mischievous, like she's about to let him in on some juicy secret, and prepares for her to make some naughty suggestion. (That's usually what he gets when she makes this face, and God, did he miss this face in those dark months after she was raped.)

"So," she starts, shifting until she's comfortably seated, facing the keys. "I have a secret for you."

"Is it a naughty secret?" he asks, getting straight to the point. Never hurts to be direct, right?

She laughs a little and shakes her head. "No, sir – although I wouldn't mind christening this lovely new bench later tonight. But that can wait."

He leans in, presses kisses into the warm, sweet-smelling skin of her neck and murmurs, "Are you sure? Because I think that'd be a great thing to do right… this… minute."

"I'm sure," she chuckles, nudging him off with her shoulder. "I was about to tell you a secret."

"Right." He embellishes a sigh, and pulls away. "Tell away."

"I played the piano, too," she confesses, and Cooper makes a point to look just a little offended.

"You never told me that. You were all 'why didn't you ever tell me?' about something _you_ did, too, and didn't ever tell me?"

"Well, I never liked it," she tells him, but from the way she settles her fingers on the keys, he can tell she spent a decent amount of time doing something she never liked. "My momma thought we should all learn an instrument, so I took piano from the time I was six, until I was ten. Then they offered band at school, and I switched to the French horn. Which lasted about three months before I gave up, quit music entirely, and sweet-talked Big Daddy into convincin' Momma to be satisfied with riding as my main extra-curricular. Music was just wasted time away from the horses, as far as I was concerned."

"Ah. Well. I _suppose_ you get a pass then," he relents, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "As long as I do, too."

"I think that's fair." She presses a few keys at random, then admits, "Secretly, when I got older, I kind of wished she'd made me stick with the piano. Landry played the guitar and Duke played trumpet, and they'd be workin' on stuff, actual songs, and the best I could manage was… well…"

She straightens her spine a little, searches out the right keys and plays. It's immediately recognizable. "'Heart and Soul,'" Cooper says, smiling and nodding. He knows this one, too. Hell, everyone knows this one. "The piano piece known by musicians and non-musicians alike."

She stops after only a few bars, and confirms, "Mmhmm. I understand sheet music, I could sit down and plunk out somethin' simple if I needed to, but the only things I really know from memory are 'Heart and Soul,' 'Chopsticks,' and, at this point, a probably pretty crappy rendition of the beginning of 'Für Elise.'" She pauses for a second, then adds, "Oh, and I do a pretty mean 'Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.'"

Cooper laughs, then nudges her hands back toward the keys. "Do 'Heart and Soul' again. I'll play the bottom."

"Yeah?"

"Mmhmm."

She starts again, plunking out the melody, and he comes in with the bass part when the time is right. It's been ages since he's played this, but it's muscle memory. It all comes back to you. Charlotte stumbles a bit in the middle, but just curses and laughs it off, and Cooper thanks his lucky stars that he's in for a lifetime of nights like this with her. Easy nights, where they're sitting together, doing something silly, and mundane, and laughing about it.

He lied before, he thinks. _This_ is the most beautiful he's ever seen her. This moment, right now, when she's finishing the song with a clumsy little flourish. It must be written all over his face, because when she looks at him, that bright-as-the-sun grin dims suspiciously and she asks, "What?"

"Just thinking about how beautiful you are," he tells her honestly, and he's not surprised when all she does in response is roll her eyes.

"Flatterer."

"I only speak the truth."

Her chuckle in response is soft, distracted even, and he can tell she's thinking about something other than music and flattery even before she leans her shoulder into his and says, "This last year… these last few months… They've really sucked."

"Yeah," he murmurs, sliding his arm around her shoulders again and hugging her just a little closer to his side.

"But I'm sittin' here now, and…" Another little laugh, a rueful smile, a shake of her head. "I can't remember the last time I was as happy as I am right this second."

Cooper feels his heart flop over in his chest, and marvels at her ability to turn him into a little bit of a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl with just a well-placed word. And then he remembers how she hasn't always been good with the words, and figures there's nothing to be ashamed of.

He's not sure exactly what to say in response, so he leans in and presses his lips to her brow. He pulls back just enough to answer, "Me too," his lips brushing the skin of her forehead as he whispers to her.

The moment doesn't last – and unsurprisingly, she's the one who breaks it, pulling away and giving him _that look_ again. "You know, now that we have this, I think we both may have to brush up on our skills."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Mmhmm. Think maybe you could help me, uh, _bone up_ on my piano playin'?"

Cooper laughs outright, and nods. "I think I could definitely do that."

"I'm not the best student, though," she tells him suggestively, leaning in close again to whisper in his ear. "You may have to give me some… incentives."

"How about that thing I do with my tongue that you love so much," he suggests, hands already moving to her hips. "Think that could persuade you to work harder?"

"Oh, most definitely," she agrees, and before too long, he's making good on his persuasion, and they're well on their way to christening their latest piece of furniture.


	11. Chapter 11

They finished the invitations, got them in the mail, and decided on a whim to indulge themselves in a romantic dinner. And then there was the sex, which had been particularly mindblowing tonight. She's started to get the itches back – the sudden, insatiable urges to get naked and sweaty with him, to reach over while she's driving and put her hand in places she probably shouldn't, until he's laughing and squirming and telling her to put her hand back on the wheel before her one-handed driving causes an accident. They hadn't even made it to the bed for the first round – she'd been precariously propped on the arm of the sofa, and loving every off-kilter minute of it. So it's safe to say, despite the stress of the last couple of days, tonight has been a good night.

So it's jarring, incredibly jarring, to fall into a deep, loose-limbed sleep and find herself, half an hour later, pinned under Lee McHenry again. She can smell the sweat, feel the ache in her cheek, the searing pain between her legs and her heart is pounding hard, hard, harder in her chest. This isn't right, she thinks. This isn't right.

And then she sees herself, hovering over his shoulder, arms crossed and frowning down at the horror before her. The pain of what he's doing to her fades just a little, and she remembers: just a dream. Not real.

"This _isn't_ right," she tells herself, extending a hand down. "All you've gotta do to end it is wake up, Charlie."

She looks up at Lee McHenry, still monstrous and sweaty and railing away at her, but she can't feel the phantom pains anymore, and it looks almost more like he's doing some kind of grotesque push-ups than anything actually involving her. "I am not afraid of you," she tells him, her voice shaky. "This isn't real. And I am not afraid of you. And I am going to wake up."

She doesn't.

"Now."

She doesn't, still, and now she's getting nervous again, feeling the mass of him, and the way it hurt. She glances up to herself for help, but she's gone now. Nothing but the open door of her office to greet her.

"Now, God damnit!" she growls, groping next to her for the broken shard of her lamp that earned her those fifty-three stitches in her arm. She feels it, grips it, and rams it hard into Lee McHenry's neck. He stops, gurgles a little, and as the blood starts to spurt she pushes him off her and starts to sit up.

And suddenly she's awake – finally, she's awake, naked still, and tangled up in the sheets, her fingers shaking and skin wet with sweat. She sits up, pushes her hair back, and curses quietly. It's been weeks since she's dreamed of it. Of him. Not since the night after she forgave him – and that one was a doozy. For all her zen and calm after she got home that night, he'd reared up hard in her dreams again. Thrown her for a loop. Her battered, stressed subconscious not letting her forget how terrified she'd been from the moment Sam told her he was back again. But that had been the last of the nightmares, and she'd foolishly thought she might actually be free of them.

Apparently not.

She looks over at Cooper, still sound a sleep beside her. Good. It means there was no screaming. No embarrassing whimpering, or thrashing, or any of the other things she'd disturbed his sleep with for weeks after the attack.

She's suddenly aware that her mouth is cotton-dry, so she slides as carefully as she can from the bed, making a pit-stop on the way to the bathroom to fish one of Cooper's t-shirts from his dresser and shrug it on. She's still on edge, just a little bit, and the last thing she wants to be is naked and vulnerable.

She feels for her cup in the bathroom, unwilling to turn on the light and risk waking him. Fills it with tap water, gulps it down, then refills and gulps again. Figures she might as well pee while she's there, especially with two more cups of water in her, and realizes mid-stream that she's gonna have to flush, and it'll wake him just as much as the light would've.

Sure enough, when she crawls into bed, he rolls over and nuzzles into her shoulder, fumbles an arm over her belly. "When'dyougeddashirt?" he mumbles, and she can feel his frown.

She can't help it; she lets out a little laugh. "When I got up. Had to pee."

He tugs a little at the fabric. "Off."

She tugs his arm more tightly around her and shakes her head. "Not tonight." He gives her a really rather pathetic, whiny groan of protest, and she rolls her eyes and fesses up. "I had a rape dream. Don't wanna be naked right now."

And suddenly, it's as if he's wide awake – or trying to be. He lifts his head, blinks at her. "You okay?"

"Mmhmm," she assures, guiding his head back down toward her shoulder. "Just frustrated. And a little spooked. Sometimes I think I'll never be rid of 'em."

"What can I do?" he asks, breath warming the cotton over her shoulder.

"Just lay with me," she whispers. "Stay just like this."

"Mmkay." He tilts his head up and presses a kiss to her cheek, then her jaw, her neck, and finally her shoulder. His arm tightens just a little around her, one leg tangling with hers, and it's not long before he's deadweight against her again.

Sleep comes slowly for Charlotte, but when it comes, it's peaceful.


	12. Chapter 12

She has four missed calls from her mother, and Cooper has eight from his. Neither of them gives a good goddamn. They're sprawled naked on the bed of an expensive hotel suite, bodies sticky with sweat and champagne, strawberry juice and flecks of chocolate. The sheets are shot, she's sure. She's broken the no alcohol rule she's had in place since the rape (she and Amelia have made a pact not to drink between NA meetings, something about it just seems wrong), just for the night, and now she's tipsy and giddy, and languid.

"Married sex is the best," she murmurs, turning her head to grin at him. She's gotta stop smiling at some point, she thinks. Her cheeks are achin'.

"You've missed it?" he teases, and she scowls at him even thought he's clearly joking.

She summons up the energy to move, rolls on top of him and pins him to the mattress. "Married sex _with you_ is the best," she corrects. "You…" She plops a kiss on his brow. "Are the best sex…" The tip of his nose. "I've ever…" Just under his ear. "Had." She takes his mouth again, deep and heated, and his hands are on her hips, sliding up her ribs. Before long they're back into it, wet mouths travelling over hot skin, fingers searching and stroking and – the phone rings again. His, this time. Shrill and jarring, and Charlotte lets out a frustrated breath.

"For God's sake, what do they think is gonna be accomplished by callin'?"

"Ignore it," he tells her, all of his attention still on the breasts right in front of his face.

"Mmkay…" He's just done something deliciously distracting, and the last thought she can keep in her head long enough to get out of her mouth is, "We're gonna catch so much hell tomorrow."

"It'll be worth it," he assures, and then, "Shh!"

Charlotte snickers and does as she's told, for once.

Forty-five minutes later, she can think clearly again, and her voicemail light is blinking insistently from the nighttable. She looks at it, debates checking them, and decides that no, this night's been too perfect to ruin it with drama. Still, she turns to Cooper and says, "I know we made the right choice. But the polite Southern girl in me is feelin' a little bad about makin' people come all that way for nothin'. I'm in for a verbal spankin' when I finally call Momma."

"I'm gonna get Jewish mother guilt. You've got nothing on me," he assures, rolling onto his side next to her, and tracing patterns over her sweat-slicked belly. Charlotte let's out a little chuckle, and shrugs.

"Maybe. I just wish…"

"You wish what?"

She takes a deep breath, and risks putting a damper on the evening to voice her truth, "Did you tell your parents I was raped?"

He frowns a little bit, stills his hand and lets it rest gently over her navel. "You asked me not to."

"Yeah, but you tell 'em everything."

"Not that," he assures her. "I won't betray your trust with this. I've been very careful in what I say to them about what happened to you."

"So they don't know."

"No."

"And my Momma doesn't know – I stuck with the whole mugging lie with her." She shifts a little, sighs heavily. "Maybe we should tell 'em. I think maybe, if they knew what we've already been through, if they knew how hard we've had to work to stay together, and how good we are now despite all of it. Maybe they'd feel different about us bein' married."

Cooper leans in closer, and presses a kiss to her forehead. "That's up to you. I don't want you to tell them that because you feel like you have to. But if you really want to, if you think it'll help, we can tell them."

"I think I want to think about it some more," she tells him, not quite sure if she wants to give up that little piece of privacy just yet.

"Okay." He kisses her temple. "Whatever you want, Mrs. Freedman."

Charlotte snickers a little, and wrinkles her nose. "Mrs. Freedman is your mother. I am Doctor Charlotte King."

"Want to examine me, Dr. King?" Cooper teases, and Charlotte can't help it. She laughs again, her hand sliding down between them.

"Oh, most definitely," she murmurs heatedly, and then they're at it again.


	13. Chapter 13

They're sitting up in bed, reading – or, pretending to read, but the truth is neither of them is absorbing any of the words in front of them. Cooper has his laptop open to an article about the latest iPhone 5 rumors, but he's really watching Charlotte. She has a book cracked open on her lap, but she hasn't turned a page in five minutes. He wonders if she realizes that she's looked at her phone no less than six times since she started reading this page. No wonder it's taking her so long to get through it.

She checks again, and he can't help himself, he has to ask: "What's up, Char?"

She looks up, almost startled and says, "Huh?"

"You keep checking your phone, you're not really reading… what are you waiting for?"

She gets that guarded look he's so familiar with and says, "Why're you starin' at me?"

"Because you're beautiful?" he tries. She rolls her eyes, but cracks a smile, so he smiles back and then says, "No, seriously, I'm just… worried, I guess. About you. About what's troubling you."

"It's nothin'," she tells him, sliding her bookmark into place and closing her book with a sigh.

"No, it's not." Cooper sets his laptop aside and turns to face her. "Come on. Spill. We're married now, and sharing is part of the deal."

She leans her head back against a little and confesses, "I'm worried about Amelia. She's havin' a rough time. The whole Betsey thing is really hard on her, and she…" Charlotte looks at him, then, hard. Like she's trying to determine if it's okay to share this with him. He'd be offended, but he knows that she and Amelia have something in common that he'll never understand – the shared experience of addicts. The meetings. So it means a lot when she forges ahead and says, "I'm worried she's gonna fall. She had a drink at the weddin' reception – didn't mean to, grabbed a glass of somethin' she thought was somethin' else, but she's got the taste of it now, and…" She blows out a breath. "She's just a kid, Coop. She's young, and she's stressed, and she's cravin' it." She pauses for a second, and Cooper can tell she's not done, so he just sits and listens patiently, waiting for her to add, "And I asked her to go to a meetin' with me this afternoon and she wouldn't."

Ah, there it is. That's what's really bothering her about all this.

"Put it off," Charlotte continues. "Said we'll go tomorrow mornin'. I just have this bad feelin'…"

Well, that's not so bad, Cooper thinks, making a point to vocalize his thoughts and reassure her, "Tomorrow's just a few hours away. You'll meet her in the morning, go to your meeting, and everything will be fine." He reaches over, tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. "I don't think it's as bad as you think. I mean, she doesn't look like she's about to lose it."

The look Charlotte gives him in response is sharp and critical, "'She doesn't look like she's about to lose it'?" Charlotte repeats back. "Jesus, Cooper, there's not a look to fallin' off the wagon. You think I looked like a drug addict when I was first hooked on the pills? Did I look like an addict the handful of times I called Amelia, middle of the night, middle of the day, because I couldn't stop thinkin' about what happened to me and all I wanted was to take a pill and forget? Because you were here, you'd know. There were nights I laid right next to you, wishin' the feelin' would go away, waitin' on it to pass, and then waitin' on you to fall asleep so I could sneak outta bed and wake her up, have her talk me out of it, remind me I don't need it, I… You have no idea how much Amelia did for me over the past few months, and I don't have the luxury of just hopin' she'll be alright now."

He knows more than she thinks – he became a light sleeper after her attack, always waiting for her to wake up him with a nightmare, always on guard in case someone broke in, in case she needed him but was too proud to say anything. He knows more than she thinks about her late night calls to Amelia, but he's always figured it was their business and if she wanted to share it with him she would. So he kept his mouth shut – just like he's doing now. Now, when he just nods, and says, "Okay. Then what do you want to do?"

She thinks for a minute, then slumps a little. "Nothin'. Yet. I told her she can't turn a slip into a fall; how's she s'posed to do that if I'm treatin' her like she's already lost it?" She shakes her head a little, looks him in the eye. "All I can do tonight is wait. Pray she's not out there drinkin' herself silly somewhere, and hope she shows up in the mornin'."

"And if she doesn't?" Cooper asks.

"If she doesn't – if she falls of that wagon – I'm gonna drag her back onto it if it's the last thing I do," she vows, and he can tell she means every word. Especially the last ones: "I owe it to her."


	14. Chapter 14

"Did you help her?" he asks, when they find a quiet moment.

Charlotte doesn't have to ask who he's talking about. She sets her pen down, drops her voice so the nurse standing a few feet away can't hear them and says, "I did my best. Told her she'd get through it. That it'd be hell, but she'd come out the other side of it. She got the message, I think." He nods, and the silence stretches between them for a minute before she adds, "I hope."

He laces his fingers with hers and tells her, "I bet she did." His lips curve into a smile she knows is meant to tease her when he adds, "You've always been pretty good at getting your point across."

Charlotte smirks at him, and shakes her head. Understatement, she thinks. And then she thinks that "always" is the wrong word to use there. She's had her share of difficulty in sharing how she feels the last few months. But she's learned, she's managed. Eventually.

"Have I told you lately that I'm really, incredibly proud of you?" he tells her, out of nowhere, voice full of sincerity and all that pride he speaks of. It catches her of guard and she frowns.

"What?"

"You are the strongest person I know. You've been through hell. I mean, we've both - but y'know, you more than me, obviously. And you picked yourself back up." Charlotte glances around anxiously, swallowing hard. This is turning into a very private moment, and she'd rather have it without an audience. And the way he's talkin', she's likely to get all misty and she can't have that in the middle of a hospital corridor. He must be able to tell, because he sucks in a breath and finishes with, "Not everybody manages to do that, but you did. So I'm proud of you."

She taps her pen against the chart in her hand and offers him a little smile. "Well," she says softly, "I had help."

His mouth curves into a smile, too, and hers widens to match his. Then, she tells him, "We oughta get back to work," and the moment is broken.

He takes a step back, the intimacy of the moment fading in the space between them, but he doesn't leave her. Instead he slings an arm over her shoulder and says, "Nah. Let's take a break. Maybe find a supply closet somewhere, and..."

He waggles his brows suggestively and she chuckles and gives him a little shove. "No time for that, mister. I've got too much on my plate tonight."

He puppy dog pouts at her, but drops a kiss on her forehead and tells her "fine" and "later," then leaves her be.

As she watches him walk away, she thinks of the last year, and how far they've come. How far she's come.

And she has to admit, she's a little bit proud of herself, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally, Coping is finished. Why it took me so long to figure out how to cap this one off, I really don't know.


End file.
